


celeste my beloved

by portraitofwlw



Category: Big Little Lies (TV), Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
Genre: Allusions to Sexual Assault, Also the smut isnt hot be warned, Domestic, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mild Blood, Mild Smut, celeste and jane getting the love they deserve, not quite a character study, relationship study?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofwlw/pseuds/portraitofwlw
Summary: Looking at Celeste, I could see every moment of our lives stretched out before us, all of my hopes and dreams entangled in her.
Relationships: Jane Chapman & Celeste Wright, Jane Chapman/Celeste Wright
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	celeste my beloved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chenilles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chenilles/gifts).



> thank you to kerry for persuading me to attempt to write Celeste, hopefully this is half as good as you want it to be.

Memory is a funny thing. The things we choose to remember, the things we can, the moments that stick in our minds like glue while others fade away. There were times that I wished I could remember every moment of my life, or at least the last three years of it. It felt like a betrayal of my mind and body to forget little things like how Ziggy giggled when I cut my bangs unevenly so they slanted across my forehead, or how Madeline once got so frustrated that she stomped her feet like a toddler (a resemblance Renata took no time to point out), or how Renata grinned during the first party in her new house, having finally clawed her way back to the top of Monterey’s social ladder. But mostly I wanted to remember her. Celeste. How she spoke, how she walked, how she laughed, the pressure of her fingers on my skin, the taste of her lips against mine, all of it. I wanted to remember how her first attempt at making a birthday cake for Ziggy had turned out charred and black because we had forgotten to set a timer and fallen asleep on the couch. I wanted to remember how she shrieked as the boys, a trio now instead of a duo, chased her around the living room with nerf guns. I wanted to remember the glow that radiated from her after she won a case, and the humble smile that graced her features when I congratulated her. There never felt like enough time with her; I could've been born with her and died in her arms and it still wouldn't have been enough.

While I'm laying in bed at night, Celeste's arm lazily around my waist, my mind inevitably drifts to these moments, but often with a larger question looming in the background: when this all ends, when I'm old and grey, what will I be able to remember? That's a question that has always terrified me. I don't want to forget any of it, any of the last few years. And I'm afraid that if I don't think about them enough, if I don't take as much in now as I possibly can, that things will start to blur like a shaky Polaroid instead of being a clear image in my mind. 

\--

I thought of the first time I saw her, not at the coffee shop, but across the crowd of people at my son's orientation. That first passing glance, before Madeline had pulled me over to say hello, almost enough to get a full picture, but not quite: when she was more imagination than flesh and blood. But still, even in my mind she stood out like a marble statue among everyone else, untouchable, ethereal, terrifying. 

_Whatever we find truly beautiful, we quiver before it. Real beauty is often quite alarming._

Well she was it. Real beauty. And I quivered.

She seemed surreal to me, even as I watched her husband, my rapist, the father of our children, fall down the stairs with a sickening smack, his skull cracked open and bare on the concrete. She was still an angel then, celestial, like her name implied. Even when she turned and vomited into the bushes when she thought nobody was looking, even as I got to know her over the months that followed, even when she became one of my closest friends, she never quite drifted down from the heavens. That was not to say she was detached, any more so than I was. She was an angel and a human at the same time, which should've been paradoxical, but wasn't in the slightest.

She was never slow to tell me I was gorgeous too. The words naturally flowed from her mouth in response to whatever compliment I had bestowed upon her. I knew she felt uncomfortable being complimented, bashful at her own beauty, but I also knew that she meant her words, that they were not empty cliched replies, that she believed them. But if I was beautiful, it was in a modern way, the way that you'd call a glass skyscraper beautiful; the way of trees and moss and the color blue. Celeste had old beauty. The type that inspired Renaissance painters and the Greeks compared to Aphrodite. She had marble beauty, silk, pale lilac and gold. She was a monarch, she was a goddess, she was a church, and I worshipped her. I got down on my knees and prayed to her before I went to bed, called out to her, begged her to save me. 

Sometimes everything we had built together felt more like a mirage than reality, like there was no way that I had this life, no way that I fit in with these people and shared a bed with someone like Celeste. It was sometimes like I was looking at a painting in a museum, everyone perfectly poised and beautiful and cohesive and separate from me. I did my best to push that feeling down, far enough that I could almost forget I ever felt it. 

It had taken several months, almost until the time when I had stopped going back to my little apartment every night, until I started smelling more of myself in Celeste's guest bed than I did in my own, that the newness of everything was finally gone. That phrase in and of itself seems negative, but it wasn't, in most ways I felt better than before. I've always heard people say that love only works when you're discovering new things about the other person, that you need mystery and excitement to keep yourself interested, but with Celeste really knowing her made me feel like the luckiest person alive.

It was only after the newness had faded and given way to stability, to routine, that I started to realize that maybe, if she was a goddess, then she had brought me up to heaven with her; maybe I wasn't looking up at her from my place on earth, but looking directly into her eyes as an equal, whether we had started that way or not. She didn't feel any less gold under my fingertips, but she did feel warmer-- like I could really reach out and touch her. I finally felt as though I belonged here, with her, the part of me that had been looking in from the outside having finally been invited inside. 

The feeling of sharp and quick pain flooded through my senses all at once and shook me from my daze. I was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. I looked down and realized that I had sliced my finger on my knife, quite badly. My blood ran in red rivers down between my fingers and dripped off the edge of the knife, staining the potatoes I'd been cutting brilliantly. For a moment I forgot about the pain and stood there, admiring the scene as if it were part of a movie. But then I heard Josh shriek and the fast pattering of feet running away, and I realized if it was a movie, it was a horror, especially with the imagination of a seven year old.

I stupidly stood there even still, bleeding little pools onto the cutting board until Celeste came rushing out from the bedroom and over to me, her hair whipping behind her as she turned the corner, her eyes wide and a little panicked. 

"I'm fine, I'm fine." I heard myself say as she turned on the tap and thrust my hand under the running water. I hissed in pain and she clenched my wrist harder. I could see the faint startings of tears in her eyes. 

"What happened?" She asked me, and I could hear in her voice a quiet note of hysteria as she looked again at my mess of a finger. 

"I don't know." I internally begged her to forgive me for giving her another thing to worry about, another thing to do when her head was already full with a million things. She took my hand out from under the water and it was quickly red again, as if it had never been washed off. 

"You'll need stitches, we need to go to the ER." 

I looked at her for a second, a bit shocked, as if the possibility that I needed more than a quick band-aid hadn’t occurred to me, before I grabbed a few paper towels and held them tightly around the wound so she wouldn't have to look at it any longer. 

"I'll text you when I get there. Tell the boys I'll be fine, there's no point in scaring them." I made a move to grab my keys from the counter but she snatched them from right underneath my fingertips. She looked at me like I had just told her the most ludicrous thing she'd ever heard.

"Absolutely not, I'm driving you there." She turned her head towards the playroom and yelled, "Boys come out here now and put on your shoes!" Her tone conveyed her seriousness, and all three of the boys were rushing to comply. Josh looked fearfully at my hand, so I smiled at him in a gesture I hoped was comforting and gripped my finger tighter, ignoring the bolt of pain it sent up my arm. 

"Go out to the car, we'll be right there." Celeste smiled at me like I wasn't ruining a perfectly peaceful night, and ushered me through the door. 

I complied and went out to the driveway then got into the passenger's seat, feeling distinctly younger, and tried not to think of the fact that the paper towel I had wrapped around my finger was already wet with blood. I worried that maybe the blood would drip onto the leather seats or scare the boys, and I suddenly wished I had just driven myself. 

"Put your seatbelts on boys." I heard Celeste say as she opened the back door. The boys hurried into their car seats and sat quietly, obviously picking up on the nervous energy radiating from me and Celeste. When Celeste got into the driver's seat she gave my knee a reassuring squeeze and pulled out into the street, her speed giving away her nerves more than her face. 

By the time we pulled into the parking lot to the hospital the paper towels around my finger were all but dripping, and the initial adrenaline had worn off enough that my finger was throbbing in pain. I looked to Celeste to ask her if I could leave her with the boys and rush in by myself, but she nodded before I could even open my mouth. I opened the door and blew a kiss to the boys in the backseat as they drove off to park. The smile fell from my face once I turned towards the hospital, having no reason to stick there, and all I could think of was the pain, the nauseating pain, hitting me in waves. 

The receptionist took my name, gave me a form to fill out, and asked why I had come in. I simply held up my hand and peeled back the paper towels to show her. She didn't look twice or flinch, I'm sure she had seen worse. All she did was pick up the phone and ask for a nurse and a resident to come assist me. 

"Do you have someone coming in with you who can fill this out?" 

I glanced at the form. There was a lot about family history that even I didn't know, as well as questions about my medications and habits I doubted anyone besides me could answer or had ever paid attention to. 

"Yes." I looked over my shoulder and saw Celeste on her way through the door with the three boys holding each other's hands in a chain. "That's her, Celeste Wright." 

The secretary nodded and gestured to the nurse waiting for me to come over and sit on one of the beds in the far corner of the room. I glanced behind me once, and was met with Celeste's longing eyes, silently telling me she wanted to follow me to the hospital bed and calm the nerves that radiated off of me. She looked away first, and I turned around to face my fate. 

The nurse caught my eye and waved me over with a friendliness that resembled one shared between two old friends meeting for lunch, not two strangers in an emergency room. I walked over to her, attempting to swallow down the lump in my throat that had been building since I stepped foot in the hospital. After I had settled on the bed she smiled and introduced herself as Jennifer, then began to take off the paper towels and examine my finger quietly. She was gentle with me, which I appreciated, and I tried not to look as she dabbed at the blood with a gauze. From what I could see, the cut was deep and about an inch in length. 

"You managed to get yourself pretty good. You'll definitely need some stitches. I'll get someone down here right away ok sweetie?" She handed me a fresh gauze pad to hold over the wound. "Hold your arm over your chest and keep pressure on the cut, it should help lessen the bleeding."

I nodded and did as she said. She turned around to move to another patient but I called out to her before she could go far.

"Wait!"

She turned back towards me. 

"Would you close the curtains please?" 

I didn't want Celeste or any of the boys to get a glimpse of the pain I was inevitably about to endure. I had never been fond of doctors, and my only experience with stitches was a terrible one when I was barely ten. I knew Celeste would worry either way, but having the boys be fearful was something I wanted to avoid. I could handle things by myself, especially pain. Pain was an old friend, someone I knew how to accommodate and please. It felt more taxing to let someone see me suffer than it did to shoulder the entire burden myself.

I heard the secretary call Celeste's name, presumably to have her fill out the paperwork on my medical history. I wondered if she would be able to fill out any of it. Maybe I should have told the secretary I would do it myself, to avoid the situation entirely.

I didn't have very long to dwell on the possibility though, because the resident quickly came through the curtain, a suture kit in hand. He shook my good hand and curtly introduced himself as Gregg. He looked about my age and even in his scrubs he had a youthful air to him, almost immaturity. I hoped he knew what he was doing.

"The nurse numbed you correct?" 

I nodded. I could still feel my finger somewhat, but the nerves seemed muffled. 

"Alright. I'm going to get started right away then. May I have your hand on the side table here?" He gestured to the retractable plastic table attached to the arm of the bed. I placed my hand on it and looked away.

I could feel him begin to work, and bit my lip as I tried not to tense or shift at all. The numbing shot had helped but it didn't take away the pain completely. It was almost as if I could feel the pain, but it didn't fully register as my own. A few tears slipped out of my eyes of their own accord and reddened the skin of my cheeks. I wanted someone there with me, someone to hold my hand and comfort me. I wanted Celeste. I felt like a small child admitting it, even to myself. 

When Gregg had finished and packed up and I was allowed to walk back to the front desk to check out, my eyes had mostly dried. The secretary gave me a comforting smile, like she could see the invisible tears on my skin, and handed me the form Celeste had filled out for me to check everything over. I was surprised to find it almost completely finished. She had put herself, then my parents, then Madeline as the emergency contacts, and I smiled in spite of myself. I was overcome with the sudden feeling of being known, of being cared about, of someone deeming me worthy of paying attention to. I handed the form back after scribbling a few more details about my parent's health, and turned to Celeste. 

She was already smiling at me, as if she had been waiting for me to turn around. I wished that we were alone so I could hug her and sit with her for a few hundred hours, uninterrupted, but Ziggy was rushing to hug me before I could even finish looking at her, Josh and Max not far behind. I wrapped my arms around the three of them, careful to stick my finger out of harm's way.

"Did it hurt?" Was the first question out of Josh's mouth. 

I ruffled his hair and smiled. 

"Nope. Not one bit, I'm all better now." I didn't feel the slightest bit bad about lying to him, not when I saw the relief wash over his face. 

"Come on boys." Celeste called, motioning them towards the door. I trailed alongside them, and Celeste appeared at my other side, her hand settling on my back softly. She flashed me a smile that said, ‘I wish I could comfort you right now, because I can see the pain you're in, even if you try to hide it from everyone.’ She had always been able to do that, been able to see right through me.

It wasn't until later that night, once a makeshift dinner was made and the boys had settled down from the excitement of the day, that we did get our moment alone. Things were still in the house, and the only light came from the moon shining through the big windows facing the ocean. 

Celeste insisted on holding me that night. She wasn't normally an overly affectionate or physically touchy person, but that night her arms couldn't seem to leave my waist; whether we were sitting on the couch or standing in the kitchen, her arms were perpetually draped across my skin like a fine fabric. She whispered in my ear all the comforting things I had longed to hear with the nurse's needle in my skin, and more. She kissed me in her perfectly Celeste way, a little soft and a little needy, but mostly loving, because she was always seeking out love in me, drawing it from places I didn't know existed, and then filling the empty space with her own love 'til I was full of it.

That night in bed even, she stayed glued to my back, holding me tightly against her, her hand snaked under my shirt, reminding her that I was there, safe and sound. She wouldn't vocalize it, but I knew she had been rattled by what happened today, seeing my blood pool on the kitchen counters and drip down my wrist. So I gripped her just as tightly, leaned back into her embrace, and let her be reminded that I was alright. 

I thought back to that first time, when she ran her hand across the smooth plane of my stomach and let it trail further down, until it skimmed between my legs. I had tried to process that it was Celeste above me, that it was her hair that tickled my chest as it hung down like a curtain around us, that it was her lips that pressed against mine. I wanted this, I wanted her so badly, and she wanted me. I knew she'd been waiting for this, secretly, quietly, so much so that I barely noticed her desire, since the first time we'd had sex. I had touched her, kissed her, been inside her, but I couldn't accept reciprocation. I felt ashamed, even despite the reassurances and complete acceptance from her. I wanted it so badly, so why couldn't I just let her do it?

Suddenly Celeste's hand, which had been stroking in between my legs, stopped. I looked up at her, and realized she had been staring at me. 

"You want me to stop." She didn't ask.

"No, no I don't, I'm fine Celeste." I grabbed her hand and tried to move it back down my body, but she resisted. 

"Jane, you have to tell me when you're uncomfortable, you promised me you would." Celeste's voice was watery. 

"I'm okay." I said, half to myself, and pushed up on my elbows. I reached out to touch her face, but she pulled away. "I just," I hesitated- "Can we switch positions?" 

She looked at me hard, trying to decipher what was going on in my head. I tried to put a reassuring look into my eyes. 

Celeste, deciding that I wasn't acting to appease her, moved so that she was no longer on top of me and sat on the bed an arms length away, giving me plenty of room to breathe. I was struck with another wave of guilt looking at her in only her underwear, vulnerable and worried. I sat up and moved towards the end of the bed. 

"Can you sit up there?" I pointed to where I had been laying a few seconds ago. Celeste nodded and sat without question this time, waiting patiently for me to make the next move. 

"Okay." I took a breath, my face heating up already from embarrassment, and straddled Celeste's lap. "Is this alright?" 

Celeste smiled at me softly, and tucked a bit of hair behind my ear. "Of course."

"It's easier if I'm on top and I can see you." I felt my face get redder as I spoke, feeling a bit ridiculous. 

Celeste nodded in understanding, not showing any sign of frustration or condescension. She kept rubbing her thumb on the apple of my cheek in a sweet manner, melting me. 

"Can I touch you?" 

I nodded, and she placed her hands gently on my back. We sat there for a moment, almost hugging, just enjoying the feeling of our skin pressed together. After a little while I moved her hands to my chest, and gave her my silent permission to continue where we left off. 

She was impossibly gentle with every caress of her fingertips, and when she slowly progressed lower, I kept my face pressed against her neck, breathing in the sweet, fresh smell of her perfume and the heady smell of sweat on her skin. Finally finishing felt like falling off a cliff. She held me close when my stomach bottomed out and a haze distorted my vision with pleasure, and I gripped her as tight as I possibly could as I came down. It was overwhelming in a good bad way, like the burn in your lungs when you come up for air after being underwater for too long. I couldn't describe it in any other way than that-- breathing for the first time in years. 

It only took a second after her eyes met mine for me to burst into tears. 

She looked shocked for a split second, but then immediately cradled me in her arms. I clung to her, surrounding myself with a cloud of Celeste to remind myself that this was good, no pain was coming, I wasn't going to be forced into anything.

I felt as if every tear was a tiny weight being lifted off of my soul, like I was in some way cleansing myself in the holy water that was my own tears. Celeste was pressing light kisses to the skin on the back of my shoulder, reminding me I was still alive and physically present. She was bent in a way where her embrace sheltered me completely, blocking out the rest of the world. Celestial. 

I didn't believe in guardian angels, but if I did, I would've thought she was mine. 

I awoke slowly to the lazy sunshine streaming through the bedroom window, Celeste still holding me close, my index finger throbbing unpleasantly. It was bruised and felt tight where the stitches were sewn into my skin. I pressed back closer into her and relished in the few moments I had before the day began. She shifted against me in her sleep, wrapping the arm around my waist tighter. I delicately rolled over, wanting, selfishly maybe, to fully immerse myself in her, to get lost in her, to be fully present, not thinking of the past or the future. Just of Celeste. Thankfully she didn't wake, and I was awarded a few uninterrupted minutes pressed into her neck, held like a child. 

When she did finally open her eyes, the day suddenly seemed to snap into motion. The clock jumped forward twenty minutes and all of the sudden the boys were starting to wake up and we were both thrust into our lives. I wanted to reach out to her and pull her back to bed, to meld into her side again. But instead I got up with her and followed her as she went through the motions. 

In the bathroom mirror I smiled at her, not having said a word to her since we woke up. We didn't need to say anything; the air was warm between us, light with love so our thoughts could easily glide in the air instead of being forced through our mouths. She was taller than me in our reflection, the two of us looking back at ourselves, watching our own movie for a few seconds. 

Days passed in a blur of conversations and coffee and work, hardly memorable enough to be recalled by the end of each one. These long stretches of daytime were only broken by bursts of Madeline, or Renata, or occasionally Bonnie, sending a text or dropping by to have lunch. Then, when Renata and Madeline would tease each other, or Bonnie would flash a rare smile, the world would shift back into focus so I could really pay attention. Every second of my life felt like an attempt to get back to these moments, or to find the next one. All I wanted, with everything in me, was to spend time with the people I loved. To bask in the beauty of it all and soak it up. 

Nights were infinitely more special. When I got old and my entire life was stretched out behind me, I think most of my memories will be splayed against the background of the night sky, or of the low lights of evening. Nights were for the boys and dinners with my closest friends and Celeste. 

In the nights following my accident, once the moon had long since risen into the sky and we were alone, Celeste would take the time to redress my finger. The nurse had told me that it must be done twice a day, after I woke up and before I went to bed, and then she had reminded Celeste before we left, for good measure. In the morning I would swat Celeste's hand away, because she didn't have time to spare before the boys piled in the car and she needed to drive them to school, so she would begrudgingly let me tend to it myself. Nighttime was her chance to play nurse and make sure that, in the nine hours we had been apart, I hadn't gravely injured myself yet again. 

It was worth it, letting her apply the cream and bandages, if only because it gave me a chance to gaze at her more. Like a schoolgirl, her proximity still dazzled me a little, and I think it always will.

She would finish up and clean up the wrappers from the bandages like it was nothing, like it wasn’t a gesture of intimacy rivaled by the most loving kiss, like it didn’t mean so much to us both, because amidst everything we’d built there was still a guilt that we both felt, for the pain the other had endured, and I would grab her hand and thank her, because she needed to know it meant just as much for me as it did for her. Then she would smile at me and tell me not to take too long getting ready for bed, which I knew meant you're welcome and I love you at the same time. I knew I could take an hour and she would still be waiting up for me, trying to force her eyes to focus on the page of the book she was reading. But I would move quickly for both of our sakes, working on autopilot and letting my mind wander until I finished and could settle next to her yet again. 

We had been in our new house long enough that I knew where everything was without thinking. It was nice to be in a fresh place, one absent of men’s razors and phantom pains from kicks in the stomach and haunting memories that weren’t mine to keep. I didn’t like to think of the old house, but my mind wandered to it more than I’d like, especially in times like this, when I had nothing else to think of. I had always felt invasive in that house, like I wasn’t meant to be anything but a visitor there. Any time I was prompted to venture into its more intimate areas, I dreaded it. I avoided Celeste's room (not ours, it never would have been ours no matter how long we were together) for this reason exactly. It was the space she had shared with him, and I couldn't handle seeing remnants of Perry scattered around. She kept a piece of him with her, he had been her husband, no matter how terrible, but I hated feeling him here, knowing that he had stood in the same spot as me. I felt sick to my stomach just recalling it. 

Celeste and I had been together just over six months when she had started to discuss me moving in. Looking back on it makes my face go red with shame, and the argument that followed even more so. 

I had known she was going to ask me for about two weeks before she did it. It seemed perfectly reasonable, we had been together for a while and we'd been friends even longer, and I still lived in what Renata referred to as a shoebox rather than an apartment. I had kept my discomfort with her house a secret, painstakingly doing everything I could to hide it-- even when that meant sneaking into her guestroom to sleep at night, as guilty as that made me feel. If she knew how I felt, it was only unconsciously. But when the words, "will you move in with me?" came out of her mouth, everything I had been feeling came spilling out of mine. 

Though I'm not proud of it, I remember with unerring clarity what I said.

I stood there, my stomach churning and my appetite for the dinner on the stove lost. 

"I can't." 

She had looked at me, wide eyed. 

"I can't be here." I mumbled, unable to raise my voice any higher than that. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I'm sorry…" I took a deep breath and said what had been choking me. "You need to believe me when I say that I want so badly to be able to live here, in this house that you love so much, but I just can't. I can't exist where he spent every day, and I can't sleep in the bed he slept in. I just can't do it. I feel like I'm being suffocated by him while I'm here and I just can't put myself through it. I would move in with you in a second if you didn't live here, but you do, so I just need some time okay?" I rubbed at the tears streaming from my eyes and did my absolute best to keep my voice steady. 

Celeste stood there, looking a bit dumbfounded. 

"Why didn't you say something earlier? Why wouldn't you tell me?" Frustration crept into her voice.

"Because this is your house!" I let my voice rise for a second before dampening it. I wouldn't yell, because Perry yelled and screamed and I wouldn't ever do anything to spark fear in Celeste. "And you loved him, even though it was twisted and unhealthy, he was your husband and you loved him, and I'm not going to force you out of the house you shared together before you're ready." 

She stared at me.

I turned and grabbed my bag from the hook on the wall. "I'm sorry Celeste, I just need a little bit of time.” I spared her one last glance before I opened the door. “I’ll see you soon…I love you." I said, to remind her that I was still in this, all of this, with her, and that I would always come back. 

I slipped out of the front door, trying not to look at Celeste sinking into a chair, her head in her hands. I wanted to comfort her so badly, but I knew I needed this time, and that I needed to be honest with her, and give her time to think.

The sound of my boots against the pavement of the sidewalk was deafening, as was the wind that whipped past my ears as I drove down the highway. The world felt empty and vast. For the first time in months I realized that I didn't have a home anymore, outside of Celeste and the boys. The apartment I owned wasn't home, and neither was Celeste's house. The realization chilled me and made the tears come down my cheeks hard enough that I pulled over to the side of the road and let myself sob. 

I ended up on Bonnie's couch that night, because I needed someone who wouldn't ask me why I was there, or psychoanalyze me until my brain turned to mush, and I loved Madeline and Renata enormously, but they would have done just that because that's how they were. Bonnie was content to give me an extra pair of sheets and a pillow, and the space that I desperately needed. 

I drove to Celeste's house the next morning, before the boys would be awake, only to find her asleep on the couch as well, mirroring me unknowingly. I felt endlessly guilty looking at her like that, and when she opened her eyes I saw my guilt replicated in hers. A month and several emotional discussions later we were moving into a house of our own. A home. 

Now, as I walked into our bedroom and slid under the covers next to Celeste, who was absorbed in a Hemingway novel, I couldn't imagine crawling into her cold guest bed at night, or sleeping on Bonnie’s couch, or my old pull out bed, and waking up alone. 

So it didn't matter that I spent nine hours a day chasing my moments with her, because they were worth that and more. 

Moments like that night felt like the culmination of my life's events. Sitting on the couch with Celeste's head in my lap, our boys dozing off as Raiders of the Lost Arc played on the television, putting them to bed at a later hour than they should have reasonably been awake, then falling into bed ourselves not long after. If this is what all the pain I'd gone through was for, it was worth it, and more. Sharing your life with someone like Celeste was a gift (saying that to her face would make her go bright red) and I intended to cherish it. Time would slip away from us, we would change and grow old, but she was the person who understood me, who sought out the best in me and clung to it when I was at my worst, she had set up roots in me and intertwined our veins. Besides our children, because it wasn't the twins and Ziggy anymore, it was the boys, she is the great love of my life.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, comments are always appreciated!


End file.
